Grammar-Land: Grammar in Fun for the Children of Schoolroom-Shire

This is among my all-time top 10 favorite homeschool materials we've ever bought! What a delightful surprise!
My kids do NOT like grammar AT ALL, and my eldest has done well day-to-day but never seemed to carry-over basic grammar principles to his other work or even to the next lesson. He has never had the slightest interest in parts of speech, so even though he has no trouble with worksheets, he sees no need to remember them. No teacher of any sort wants to hear her student after years of training say, "what's a verb?"
(Gulp. WHAT? How is that even possible, right???)is
Enter Grammarland.
I didn't know what to expect from this, but I was looking for something I could read with both my 7th grader and 2nd grader at the same time to make Grammar classes less dry.
13 year old boys don't jump up and down yelling, "read me a Grammar story, mommy!" But this narrative personification of the parts of speech is entertaining enough that I can tell he's listening, and what's better, I can see that for the first time ever, he can remember which part of speech is which b/c he can remember the characters in the story.
The author really did a brilliant job of describing each character in a way that is significant to his duty as a part of speech. For instance, Mr. Pronoun looks a lot of Mr. Noun but is thinner b/c he does so much of Mr. Noun's work for him, and he doesn't have as many words as Mr. Noun (so he's not a "rich").
I use these clues often when they think they've forgotten one, and they always say something like, "oh, yeah, I remember.... Mr. Article was really little..."
When I started to read it to them I didn't think it was going to work for both boys, b/c the language is rich and it seemed a little heady for active boys. However, we're well into it now and both boys are hanging on without any problem and carrying over the visual clues it imparts through their own imaginations very well into their textbook work.
I do use "voices" for each of the characters and read it in a fairly dramatic way to maintain their interest. The toddlers will sit down or at least slow down and seem to enjoy hearing my vocal patterns, even though I don't think they understand the story, which is based on a courtroom scene where the judge settles disputes among the parts of speech.
I can't recommend this enough and will consider it a permanent feature in our English studies.
I find it highly entertaining for myself as an adult. If you are not a homeschooler but have a child struggling to learn the parts of speech, if they have good language skills and like to have you read to them, you might enjoy this. It will take some enthusiasm on your part, which you should find easy if you pick up on the humor imbedded in it. I could see us reading this around the fireplace as a family even if we didn't homeschool, but we are kind of old fashioned I guess. Probably not for the ultra-plugged in gamer kid- it isn't going to compete with an iPhone or high-tech computer games, but you can't fault a Grammar book for being a Grammar book now, can you?
Oh, and I am sure a classroom teacher could use it in much the same way as we do by using it as an intro to class, provided she does voices! I'm not sure what an ideal age would be, but again, it is working for us for 2nd-7th grade boys. I'd say anywhere in between when parts of speech are introduced or reviewed would be fine.

This book is so cute and very informative. I bought it for my children but it has made me chuckle more than once. I really like how it has the comprehension questions at the end of each chapter so that I can test whether or not my children have actually paid attention to what I read.

While this book may not be for everyone, we LOVED IT! My homeschooled 8 year old boy and 11 year old girl not only laughed as we read this, they learned how to parse sentences well and loved it. Usually, they understood a chapter right away, but when it came to the objective case, we read that chapter twice to understand it better.

It is a fine book. Many homeschoolers have used this.

LOVE it!!! Who'd have thunk you could make grammar interesting?!!! My kids loved hearing the story and actually retained the info!!!

I have wondered for many years why it is that it seems to be so difficult to find childrens’ books (either fiction or school books) that are entertaining, interesting, and meaningful. This book is one of the few that I know of which are all of these things. Of course, it was first published in 1878.
It is possible that many of today’s young children might find some of the language too quaint, the ‘characters’ too exotic, some of the meaning a little difficult to extract, but I’d be surprised if some of them didn’t enjoy it and learn a lot about the structure of language that none of the modern courses and texts seem to be able to interest them in.
In other words, I believe that a ‘modern adaptation’, that was done very well, might be even better for some children, but that this represents the kind of book many children would find compellingly interesting and which would help them appreciate a subject which is most often felt to be dry, dull, and essentially meaningless.
I wish there were a great many more childrens’ books of this caliber, regardless of when they were written or what the particular subject they treat might be.

wonderful way to learn grammar.

Great book to aid in teaching writing.